If I Could Be Where You Are
by Liave Ekeli
Summary: Merope Gaunt looks at her son and wonders if she could have done anything to stop him from becoming what he now is, or if he would have become Lord Voldemort never the less.


**Disclaimer: **All the characters from the Harry Potter universe belong to J.K Rowling. I'm just having my fun with them. The song _If I could be where you are_ belongs to Enya.**  
Author's Notes: **A short fic I wrote after inspiration of a song by Enya. This is Merope Gaunt's thoughts on her son, who he is and what he have become.

**If I Could Be Where You Are**_  
If I Could Only Tell You_

_Where are you this moment?__  
only in my dreams__  
You're missing, but you're always__  
a heartbeat from me__  
I'm lost now without you__  
I don't know where you are__  
I keep watching, I keep hoping__  
but time keeps us apart_

Tom Marvolo Riddle. You will always be Tom Marvolo Riddle, even if you are determined to wipe the memory of that name away from the world. You are my Tom, my Tom Marvolo Riddle, my son. My only son. And the blood that was once running through my veins is still running through yours, but it seems determined to destroy you.

_Is there a way I can find you __  
Is there a sign I should know__  
Is there a road I could follow__  
To bring you back home_

It is to late for me to do anything Tom; it's to late for me to save you. I can no longer bring you back, I cannot change what you have made yourself into, what you have become. I am not sure if I ever could, even if I had kept myself alive for your sake, Tom. Even then, I am not sure I would have been able to save you. You would not have wanted me to. You would have wanted to go your own way, you always did. You were alone, and everything you have accomplished, however cruel and great, is your own doing. You have never had friends, you did not need them, and unless they had anything to offer you that you needed you found them a burden.

You never understood Tom, the pain of being alone. How could you understand that when you had never experienced anything else? You never felt it as painful, at least not to anyone's knowledge, barely your own.  
But I could tell you, Tom, I could tell you everything about the pain of being alone. Reality is cruel, as you know as well as I do. I loved a man, once. I loved a man, and that man broke my heart. But still I loved…  
Even when I knew that he no longer loved me, I loved him. I loved him until my death.  
He was your father. Tom Riddle Senior.

_Winter lies before me__  
Now you're so far away__  
In the darkness of my dreaming__  
The light of you will stay_

He killed me, Tom, he did. I won't deny it. Your father was the cause of my death. But still, I will not blame him. He could not help that I loved him, but that he did not love me. No one chooses who they love, Tom. No one.  
He was the cause of my death, and still he has no blame.  
I do.  
I am to blame for my own death. I could have continued to give him love potions, to fool him into loving me. I could have done that. But I did not. I could not.  
To live a lie is as painful as it is to love without being loved in return. Because a lie, however close to the truth it may develop itself to be, is no more than a lie.A lie can never be truth.

I could not keep on living a lie. Because I knew that someday that would kill me too. So I chose the truth over the lie, even though I knew in my heart how painful the truth would be to bear. I knew that once I stopped giving him the love potion, Tom Riddle would stop loving me.  
I know you don't fully understand, my dear Tom. You have changed too much, into evil, to be able to understand love. I will not blame you, my dear. No one fully understands love, but we feel it. Some stronger than others. You, I don't think you have ever felt love, and maybe that is my fault. Maybe if I had kept myself alive, I could have been there to love you, like a mother is supposed to love her child. Like the mother of he who now is our enemy loved her son. But would you have taken my love?

Would you have been able to love? It is not for me to answer, I do not know you well enough. You will always be my son, Tom, always. And how much you try to escape the name I once gave you, you will not succeed. To me, you will always be Tom Marvolo Riddle, and that will never change.

I know why you hate the name so much. You are jealous and afraid, Tom. Don't be. I did not love your father more than I love you.  
You think I named you after the man I loved because I did not care enough about you to give you a name that was yours and yours alone. That is not true, Tom, you do not understand. I gave you his name because I loved him as much as I did you. I wanted you to have the name of the only man I ever loved to prove to you that, even though I could not take care of you, I loved you. You did not understand, and perhaps you never will, but at least, now you know.

When you have not experienced love at it most intense and most terrible, you cannot understand how it feels to have your heart broken in a thousand pieces. Maybe you are the lucky one.  
When your heart breaks you feel as though you will never love again, that your body and soul cannot take another disappointment. Some are able to stumble to their feet again, and carry on. I was not. My broken heart claimed my life.

You say I am weak. And yet it is I who gave you the blood of Salazar Slytherin in your veins. Maybe that, if nothing else, will prove to you that someone's blood has got nothing to do with his or her strength. Your blood and your ancestry do not make you strong, Tom. Your mind and your soul do.

And you, even though you think you are, are not the strongest wizard of all time. Your soul is weak, Tom. There is scarcely anything left of it. You split your strength into too many pieces; you split your soul into seven pieces. When you thought you were making yourself stronger, all you did was weaken yourself. That is why, one day, you will fall.

_If I could be close beside you __  
If I could be where you are__  
If I could reach out and touch you__  
And bring you back home__  
_

_Is there a way I can find you__  
Is there a sign I should know__  
Is there a road I can follow__  
To bring you back home_


End file.
